Hometown: Milwaukee, WI
Branch: U.S. Navy
Unit: USS Arizona (BB-39)
Military Honors: Medal of Honor, Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: December 7, 1941 - KIA at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu County, Hawaii Territory
Age: 53
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Franklin Van Valkenburgh was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 5, 1888. Along with his older sister Helen, the Van Valkenburgh family moved to the east side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, along the shores of Lake Michigan, when he was a young child.

Franklin’s father, Franklin Pratt Van Valkenburgh, was a prominent lawyer who served as an assistant city attorney in Milwaukee and later as a U.S. attorney for the state of Wisconsin. He and his wife Jane (Swoop) Van Valkenburgh sent the children to Milwaukee’s Cass Elementary School, and later to East Side High School.

At age 17, the younger Franklin Van Valkenburgh received an appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Arriving there in 1905, Van Valkenburgh graduated with the class of 1909.

In what would become a three-decade Navy career, Van Valkenburgh’s assignments include serving on the USS Vermont (BB-20), USS South Carolina (BB-26), and USS Rainbow (AS-7) of the Asiatic Fleet.

In 1914 he reported for duty back in Annapolis and on April 2 of that year, married Marguerite Horne of Philadelphia. The two would later welcome three children: Jane, Elizabeth, and Franklin III. A fourth child was lost at birth.

From 1920-1921 Van Valkenburgh was engineer officer of USS Minnesota (BB-22). For most of 1922, he served as executive officer of the submarine support ship USS Savannah (AS-8). He returned to the Naval Academy for three scholastic years, followed by three years aboard the battleship USS Maryland (BB-46).

His assignments from the late 1920s through late 1930s included a stint at the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, command of the destroyer USS Talbot (DD-114), Inspector of Naval Material at the Navy Yard in New York, command of the USS Melville (AD-2), and duty as Inspector of Naval Material, New York District, New York.

In February 1941, now Captain Franklin Van Valkenburgh assumed command of the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39).

Having just emerged from World War I (1914-1918) and the Great Depression (1929-1939), the United States was in no mood to get involved in another international conflict. But with Nazi Germany threatening Europe and Imperial Japan becoming increasingly aggressive in the Pacific, by 1940 it was becoming clear that America could not remain on the sidelines for long.

In preparation, the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet was moved from naval bases on California’s coast to Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Dec. 4, 2016) cites a November 4, 1941, letter Capt. Van Valkenburgh wrote to his aunt, describing his preparations:

We never go to sea without being completely ready to move on to Singapore if need be, without further preparation. Most of our work we are not allowed to talk about off of the ship. I have spent 16 to 20 hours a day on the bridge for a week at a time, then a week of rest, then at it again. Our eyes are constantly trained Westward, and we keep the guns ready for instant use against aircraft or submarines whenever we are at sea. We have no intention of being caught napping.

Just a month after that letter, on December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan executed a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. On what President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed “a date which will live in infamy,” the United States was thrust into a second global conflict.

The Arizona was docked on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row. Meg Jones, author of World War II Milwaukee, describes what happened on the morning of December 7, 1941:

When the Arizona’s air raid alarm sounded at 7:55 a.m., Van Valkenburgh was seen sprinting to the one place a ship’s captain needed to be—the bridge. As he emerged from the conning tower, Van Valkenburgh was hit by shrapnel that tore into his abdomen. He must have been in intense pain but he refused to be carried to safety. Instead, he stayed at his post directing the defense of his ship. Torpedoes rocked the Arizona but the death blow came from a bomb that penetrated the deck and ignited the ship’s forward ammunition compartment. Witnesses said it looked as if the Arizona leaped out of the water. A grainy color film shows a bolt of flame and black smoke blowing sky high as the ship exploded. It would become the iconic image of America’s first minutes of World War II. It was 8:06 a.m.

Captain Franklin Van Valkenburgh spent more than three decades training for war, but until the attack on Pearl Harbor had never seen combat. He was lost in the first moments of America’s first battle of World War II.

Most of the ship’s crewmen perished in the explosion. Arizona quickly settled to the bottom of Pearl Harbor—where she still rests today.

Capt. Van Valkenburgh was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart medal and the Congressional Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest military award. His Medal of Honor citation reads:

For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and complete disregard of his own life, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor T.H., by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. As commanding officer of the U.S.S. Arizona, Capt. Van Valkenburgh gallantly fought his ship until the U.S.S. Arizona blew up from magazine explosions and a direct bomb hit on the bridge which resulted in the loss of his life.

His body was never recovered. Only a few buttons from his uniform and his Naval Academy class ring were found. Capt. Franklin Van Valkenburgh is memorialized at Forest Home Cemetery in his hometown of Milwaukee, and at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Sources
Artist’s rendering by Craig Du Mez, from original photo: NH 75840
Naval History and Heritage Command: Franklin Van Valkenburgh
Wisconsin Life: Franklin Van Valkenburgh’s Pearl Harbor
USNA Virtual Memorial Hall: Franklin Van Valkenburgh, CAPT, USN
National Medal of Honor Museum: Franklin Van Valkenburgh
U.S.S. Arizona Operation 85: CAPT(CO) Franklin Van Valkenburgh
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 4, 2016: Two captains from Milwaukee crossed paths at Pearl Harbor
Cenotaph: Find a Grave